His senses were alert, sharpened to an abnormal degree; the almost silent footfall otherwise could never have been heard.
The raised hand swung toward him; he knew that he must turn and follow the others to whatever awaited.... But the hand paused! Then swiftly the savage figure swung to face toward the entrance, and those blazing eyes, as Chet knew, were a match for any opponent.
But the eyes never found what they looked for and the quick swing of the big ape-body was never completed. In the portal of light there was framed a naked figure which sprang as if from nowhere, squat, savage and ape-like, but hairless. Its arms were upraised; the hands held a bow; and the twang of the bowstring came as one with the ripping thud of a shaft that was tearing through flesh.
The savage fell in mid-turn; and it seemed as if the blazing light of the terrible eyes must have flicked out before the breath of Death. And, protruding from the thick neck, was the shaft of a crude arrow.... There were others that flashed, thudding and quivering, into the body that jerked with each impact, then lay still, a darker blot on the floor of a dark cave.
Chet was breathless; it was an instant before he realized that he was free, that the hypnotic bonds that had bound him were loosed. It was another instant before he sensed that his companions were still marching—trudging stiffly, woodenly off through the dark. He bounded after, heedless of bruising walls; he followed where the sound of their scuffling feet marked their progress to a sure doom.
There were stairs; how he sensed them Chet could not have told. But he paused, hesitated a moment, then found the first step and half ran, half fell, through the utter darkness of the pit into which they had gone.
The odors that had seemed the utmost of vileness now came to him a hundred times worse. They tore at his throat with a strangling grip, and he was weak with nausea when he crashed upon a figure that he knew, was Kreiss. Then on, to grasp at Diane and Harkness; to drag them to a standstill in the darkness that pressed upon them smotheringly, while he shook them, beat at them, shouted their names.
"Diane! Walt! Wake up! Wake up, I tell you! We're going back!"
He swung them around; forced them to face about.
"Walt, for God's sake, wake up! Diane! Kreiss!" The deep, sobbing breath of Diane was the first encouraging response.
Then: "Free!" she gasped. "I'm free!" And Harkness and Kreiss both mumbled incoherently as they came from their hypnotic stupor.
"How—" began Harkness, "how did you—" But Chet waited for no explanation of the seeming miracle that had just taken place.
"Go back," he told them, "—back up the steps!" And a babble of cries that were terrifying in their inhuman savagery welled up from the depths of the pyramid to urge them on.
The body of their captor was prone on the floor above: they stepped over it to reach the entrance. No figure showed there now; Chet stooped low and stepped forth cautiously that the surging horde on the ground might not see him. The others followed. He felt Harkness' hand in a sudden warning grip upon him.
"Chet!" said Harkness, "there is something there in the shadow—there!" And Chet saw, even before Walt pointed, a wriggling figure that crept toward them.
He struck down the bow that Kreiss had raised, and a ray of light came through a jagged niche in the rock above to fall upon the face of the one who drew near.
Abjectly, in utmost humility, the naked figure crept toward their feet, and the savage face that was raised to theirs was wreathed in a distorted smile.
Beside him, Chet felt Harkness struggling to speak. In wondering tones that were almost unbelieving, Harkness choked out one word.
"Towahg!" he said. "Towahg!"
And the thick lips in that upraised face echoed proudly:
"Towahg! Me come!"
"Towahg!" Chet marveled; "you little devil! It's you who has been following us all this time!"
"I wish he hadn't been so bashful," Harkness added. "If he had come out and showed himself he would have saved us a lot of trouble." But Harkness stepped forward and patted the black shoulder that quivered with joy beneath his touch. "Good boy, Towahg!" he told the grinning ape-man.
Monkey-like, Towahg had to imitate, and this time he gave a reproduction of his own acts. He wriggled toward the entrance of the passage, peered around the edge, and seemed to see something that made him draw back. Then he fitted an arrow to his bow and springing upright, let it fly.
So realistic was the performance that Chet actually expected to see another enemy transfixed, but the squat figure of Towahg was doing a dance of victory beside the prostrate figure of the first and only victim. Chet reached out with one long arm and swung the exulting savage about. He heard Herr Kreiss expressing his opinion in accents of disgust.
"Ugly little beast!" Kreiss was saying. "And murderous!"
There was no time to lose: the sound of scrambling bodies was coming nearer from the dark pit beyond. Yet, even then, Chet found an instant to defend the black.
"Damned lucky for us that he is a murderer!" he told Kreiss. Then to Towahg:
"Listen, you little imp of hell! You don't know more than ten words, but get this!"
Chet was standing where the Earth-light struck upon him; he pointed into the dark where the sounds of pursuit grew loud, and he shook his head and screwed his features into an expression that was supposed to depict fear. "No! No!" he said.
He dragged the savage forward and pointed cautiously to the milling horde below, and repeated, "No! No!" Then he included them all in a wave of his hand and pointed back and out into the night. And Towahg's unlovely features were again twisted into what was for him a smile, as he grunted some unintelligible syllables and motioned them to follow.
It had taken but an instant. Towahg was scurrying in advance; he sped like a shadow of a passing cloud, and behind him the others followed, crouching low in the shelter of the deep-cut step. No figures were below them at the rear of the pyramid, and Chet reached for one of Diane's arms, while Harkness took the other. Between them they held her from falling while they followed the dark blur that was Towahg leaping noiselessly down the long slope.
No time for caution now. The savage ahead of them leaped silently; his flying feet hardly disturbed a stone. But beneath them, Chet felt a small landslide of rubble that came with them in their flight. And above the noise of their going came a sound that sped them on—the rising shout of wonder from the unseen multitude in front, and a chorus of animal cries from the pyramid's top.
Chet saw a blot of black figures at the top of the slope just as they felt firm ground beneath their feet. They followed where Towahg led in a swift race across the open arena toward the great steps at the rear. Black and white in strongly contrasting bands, the rock reared itself in a barrier that, to Chet, seemed hopelessly unsurmountable. He felt that they had come to the end of their tether.
"Trapped!" he told himself, and wondered at Towahg's leading them into such a cul-de-sac, even while he knew that retreat in other directions was cut off. The pursuit was gaining on them; savages from beyond the pyramid had sighted them now in the full light of Earth, and their yelping cry came mingled with hoarse growls as the full pack took the trail. Ahead of them, Towahg, reaching the base of the first white step, was dancing with excitement beside a narrow cleft in the rocks. He led the way through the small passage. And Harkness, bringing up the rear, took the detonite pistol in his hand.
"One shell! We'll have to waste it!" he said, and raised the weapon.
Its own explosion was slight, but the sound of the bursting cartridge when its grain of detonite struck the rocks made a thunderous noise as it echoed between the narrow walls.
"That will check the pursuit," Harkness exulted; "that will make them stop and think it over."
It was another hour before Towahg slackened his pace. He had led them through jungle that to them seemed impassable; had shown them the hidden trails and warned them against spiked plants whose darts were needle sharp. At last he led them to a splashing stream where they followed him through the trackless water for a mile or more.
The mountain with the white scar was their beacon. Harkness pointed it out to their guide and made him understand that that was where they would go.
And, when night was gone, and the first rays of the rising sun made a quickly changing kaleidoscope of the colorful east, they came at last to a barren height. Behind them was a maze of valleys and rolling hills; beyond these was a place of smoke, where red fires shone pale in the early light, and set off at one side was a shape whose cylindrical outline could be plainly seen. It caught the first light of the sun to reflect it in sparkling lines and glittering points, and every reflection came back to them tinged with pale green, by which they knew that the gas was still there.
Chet turned from a prospect that could only be depressing. His muscles were heavy with the poisons of utter fatigue; the others must be the same, but for the present they were safe, and they could find some position that they could defend. Towahg would be a valuable ally. And now their lives were ahead of them—lives of loneliness, of exile.
Harkness, too, had been staring back toward that ship that was their only link with their lost world; his eyes met Chet's in an exchange of glances that showed how similar were their thoughts. And then, at sound of a glad laugh from Diane, their looks of despair gave place to something more like shame, and Chet shifted his own eyes quickly away.
"It is beautiful, Walter," Diane was saying: "the lovely valley, the lake, the three mountain peaks like sentinels. It is marvelous. And we will be happy there, all of us, I know it.... Happy Valley. There—I've named it! Do you like the name, Walter?"
And Chet saw Harkness' reply in a quick pressure of his hand on one of Diane's. And he knew why Walt looked suddenly away without giving her an answer in words.
"Happy Valley!" Diane of all the four had shown the ability to rise above desperate physical weariness, above a despondent mood, to dare look ahead instead of backward and to find hope for happiness in the prospect.
Off at one side, Chet saw Kreiss; the scientist's weariness was forgotten while he ran like a puppy after a bird, in pursuit of a floating butterfly that drifted like a wind-blown flower. And Harkness, unspeaking, was still clinging to Diane's firm hand.... Yes, thought Chet, there was happiness to be found here. For himself, it would be more than a little lonesome. But, he reflected, what happiness was there in any place or thing more than the happiness we put there for ourselves?... Happy Valley—and why not? He dared to meet the girl's eyes now, and the smile on his lips spread to his own eyes, as he echoed his thoughts:
"Why not?" he asked. "Happy Valley it is; we just didn't recognize it at first."
They came to the lake at last; its sparkling blue had drawn them from afar off: it was still lovelier as they came near. Here was the same steady west wind that had driven the gas upon their ship. But here it ruffled the velvet of waving grasses that swept down to the margin of the lake. There was a higher knoll that rose sharply from the shore, and back of all were forests of white-trunked trees.
Chet had seen none of the crimson buds, nor threatening tendrils since entering the valley. And Towahg confirmed his estimate of the valley's safety. He waved one naked arm in an all-inclusive gesture, and he drew upon his limited vocabulary to tell them of this place.
"Good!" he said, and waved his arm again. "Good! Good!"
"Towahg, you're a silver-tongued orator," Chet told him: "no one could have described it better. You're darned right; it's good."
He raised his head to take a deep breath of the fragrant air; it was intoxicating with its blending of spicy odors. At his feet the water made emerald waves, where the clear, deep blue of the reflected sky merged with yellow sand. Fish darted through the deeper pools where the beach shelved off, and above them the air held flashing colorful things that circled and skimmed above the waves.
The rippling grass was so green, the sky and lake so intense a blue, and one mountainous mass of cloud shone in a white too blinding to be borne. And over it all flowed the warm, soft air that seemed vibrant with a life-force pulsing strongly through this virgin world.
Diane called from where she and Harkness had wandered through the lush grass. Kreiss had thrown himself upon a strip of warm sand and was oblivious to the beauties that surrounded him. Towahg was squatted like a half-human frog, binding new heads on his arrows.
"Chet," she called, "come over here and help me to exclaim over this beautiful place. Walter talks only of building a house and arranging a place that we can defend. He is so very practical."
"Practical!" exclaimed Chet. "Why, Walt's a dreamer and a poet compared to me. I'm thinking of food. Hey, Towahg," he called to the black, "let's eat!" He amplified this with unmistakable pointings at his mouth and suggestive rubbing of his stomach, and Towahg started off at a run toward trees that were heavy with strange fruit.
By night there were unmistakable signs that the hand of man had been at work. A band of savages would have accepted the place as they found it; for them the shelter of a rock would have sufficed. They would have passed on to other hunting grounds and only a handful of ashes and a broken branch, perhaps, would have marked where they had been. But your civilized man is never satisfied.
Along the mile of shore was open ground. Here the trees approached the water: again their solid rampart of ghostly trunks was held back some hundreds of yards. And the open ground was vividly green where the soft grass waved; and it was matted, too, with crimson and gold of countless flowers. A beautiful carpet, flung down by the edge of a crystal lake, and the flowered covering swept up and over the one high knoll that touched the shore.... And on the knoll, near an outcrop of limestone rocks, was a house.
"Not exactly pretentious," Chet had admitted, "but we'll do better later on."
"It will keep Diane under cover," argued Harkness; "these leaves are like leather."
He helped Diane put another strip of leaf in place on the roof; a twist of green vine tied around the stem held it loosely.
The leaves were huge, as much as ten feet in diameter: great circles of leathery green that they cut with a pocket knife and "tailored" as Diane called it to fit the rough framework of the hut. Towahg had found them and had given them a name that they did not trouble to learn. "Towahg's grunts sound so much alike," Diane complained smilingly. "He seems to know his natural history, but he is difficult to understand."
But Towahg proved a valuable man. He cracked two round stones together, and cleaved off one to a rounded edge. He bound this with withes to a short stick and in a few minutes had a serviceable stone ax that bit into slender saplings that were needed for a framework.
Chet nodded his head to call Kreiss' attention to that. "Herr Doktor," he said, "it isn't every scientist who has the chance to see a close-up of the stone age."
But Herr Kreiss, as Chet told Harkness later, did not seem to "snuggle up nice and friendly" to the grinning savage. "He is armed better than we," Kreiss complained. "I do not trust him. It is an impossible situation, this, that civilized men should be dependent upon one so savage. For what is ourkultur, our great advancement in all lines of mental endeavor, if at the last, when tested by nature, we must rely upon such assistance?"
Chet saw Herr Doktor Kreiss draw himself aloof with meticulous care as Towahg dashed by, and it occurred to him that perhaps it was as well for Kreiss that the black one knew so little of what was said.
But aloud he merely said: "You'll have lots of chances to use that mental endeavor stuff later on, Doctor. But right now what we need to know is how to get by without any of your laboratories, without text books or tools, with just our bare hands and with brains that are geared up to the civilization you mention and don't do us a whole lot of good here. Better let Towahg show us what he knows."
But Herr Kreiss only shrugged his thin shoulders and wandered off through this research-man's paradise, where every flower and insect and stone were calling to him. Chet envied the equanimity with which the man had accepted his lot, had come to this place and was prepared to spend his remaining years collecting scientific data that were to him all-important.
Again the sun sank swiftly. But this time, Chet stretched himself luxuriously upon the matted grass and turned to stare at the little fire that burned before the entrance of Diane's shelter. His pocket fireflash had kindled some dry sticks that burned without smoke.
"We will be a little careful about smoke," Harkness had warned them all. "No use of broadcasting the news of our being here. We have come a long way and I think there is small chance of Schwartzmann's party or the savages finding us in this spot."
Beyond the fire, Harkness raised himself now to sit erect and glance about the circle of fire-lit faces. "There's plenty of planning to be done," he said. "There is the matter of defense; we must build a barricade of some sort. As for shelter, we must remember that we will be here a long time and that we might as well face it. We will need to build some serviceable shelters. Then, what about clothes? These we are wearing are none the better for the trip through the jungle: they won't last forever. We've got to learn—Lord! we've got to learn so many things!"
And the first of many councils was begun.
Under a tree on the edge of the open ground a notched stick hung. Six sharply cut V's showed red through the white bark, then one that was deeper; another six and another deeper cut; more of them until the stick was full: so passed the little days.
"Some time," Herr Kreiss had promised, "I shall determine with accuracy the length of our Dark Moon days; then we will convert these crude records into Earth time. It is good that we should not lose our knowledge of the days on Earth." He made a ceremony each morning of the cutting of another notch.
Chet, too, had a bit of daily routine that was never neglected. Each sunrise found him on the high divide; each morning he watched for the glint and sparkle of sunlight as it flashed from a metal ship; and each morning the reflected light came to him tinged with green, until he knew at last that it might never be different. The poisonous fumes filled the pocket at the end of the valley where the great ship rested. She was indeed at the bottom of a sea.
Back at camp were other signs of the passing days. Around the top of the knoll a palisade had sprung up. Stakes buried in the ground, with sharpened ends pointing up and outward, were interwoven with tough vines to make a barricade that would check any direct assault. And, within the enclosure, near the little hut that had been built for Diane, were other shelters. One black night of tropic rainstorm had taught the necessity for roofs that would protect them from torrential downpours.
These did well enough for the present, these temporary shelters and defenses, and they had kept Diane and the two men working like mad when it was essential that they have something to do, something to think of, that they might not brood too long and deeply on their situation and the life of exile they were facing.
For Kreiss this was not necessary. In Herr Kreiss, it seemed, were the qualities of the stoic. They were exiled—that was a fact; Herr Kreiss accepted it and put it aside. For, about him, were countless things animate and inanimate of this new world, things which must be taken into his thin hands, examined, classified and catalogued in his mind.
In the rocky outcrop at the top of their knoll he had found a cave with which this rock seemed honeycombed. Here, within the shelter of the barricade, he had established what he called very seriously his "laboratory." And here he brought strange animals from the jungle—flying things that were more like bats than birds, yet colored gorgeously. Chet found him one day quietly exultant over a wrinkled piece of parchment. He was sharpening a quill into a pen, and a cup-shaped stone held some dark liquid that was evidently ink.
"So much data to record," he said. "There will be others who will follow us some day. Perhaps not during our lifetime, but they will come. These discoveries are mine; I must have the records for them.... And later I will make paper," he added as an afterthought; "there is papyrus growing in the lake."
But on the whole, Kreiss kept strictly to himself. "He's a lone wolf," Chet told the others, "and now that he is bringing in those heavy loads of metals he is more exclusive than ever: won't let me into the back end of his cave."
"Does he think we will steal his gold?" Harkness asked moodily. "What good is gold to us here?"
"He may have gold," Chet informed him, "but he has something more valuable too. I saw some chunks that glowed in the dark. Rotten with radium, he told me. But even so, he is welcome to it: we can't use it. No, I don't think he suspects us of wanting his trophies; he's merely the kind that flocks by himself. He was having a wonderful time today pounding out some of his metals with a stone hammer; I heard him at it all day. He seems to have settled down in that cave for keeps."
Harkness threw another stick across the fire; its warmth was unneeded, but its dancing flames were cheering.
"And that is something we must make up our minds about," he said slowly: "are we to stay here, or should we move on?"
He dropped to the ground near where Diane was sitting, and took one of her hands in his.
"Diane and I plan to 'set up housekeeping,'" he told Chet, and Chet saw him smile whimsically at the words. Housekeeping on the Dark Moon would be primitive indeed. "We are lacking in some of the customary features of a wedding; we seem to be just out of ministers or civil officials to tie the knot."
"Elect me Mayor of Dianeville," Chet suggested with a grin, "and I'll marry you—if you think those formalities are necessary here."
Diane broke in. "It's foolish of me, Chet, I know it; but don't laugh at me." He saw her lips tremble for an instant. "You see, we're so far away from—from everything, and it seems that that if Walter and I could just start our lives with a really and truly marriage—oh, I know it is foolish—"
This time Chet interrupted. "After all you have been through, and after the bravery you've shown, I think you are entitled to a little 'foolishness.' And youshallbe married with as good a knot as any minister could tie: you see, that is one of the advantages of being a Master Pilot. My warrant permits me to perform a marriage service in any level above the surface of the Earth. A left-over from the time when ship's captains had the same right. And although we are grounded for keeps, if we are not above the surface of the Earth right now I don't know anything about altitudes. But," he added as if it were an afterthought, "my fee, although I hate to mention it, is five dollars."
Harkness gravely reached into the pocket of his ragged coat and brought out a wallet. He tendered a five dollar bill to Chet. "I think you're robbing me," he complained, "but that's what happens when there is no competition. And we'll start building a house to-morrow."
"Will we?" Chet inquired. "Is this the best place? For my part I would feel safer if there were more miles between us and that pyramid. What was down in there, God knows. But there was something back of that hypnotized ape—something that knocked us for a crash landing with one look from those eyes."
The night air was warm, where he lay before their huts, but a shiver of apprehension gripped him at the thought of a mysterious Something that was beyond the power of his imagination, and that was an enemy they would never want to face. Something inhuman in its cold brutality, yet superhuman too, if this mental force were an indication. A something different from anything the people of Earth had ever known, bestial and damnable!
"I am with you on that," Harkness agreed, "but what about the ship? You have had your eye on it every day; do we want to go where we could not see it? If the gas cleared, if there was ever a season when the wind changed, think of what that would mean. Ammunition, food, supplies of all kinds, and the ship as a place of refuge, too, would be lost. No, we can't turn that over to Schwartzmann, Chet; we've got to stick around."
"I still wish we were farther away," Chet acknowledged, "but you are right, Walt; we could never be satisfied a single day if we thought the ship could be reached. Then, too, Towahg seems to think this is O. K.
"As near as I can learn from his sign language and a dozen words, this is about as good a spot as we can find. He says the ape-men never cross the big divide; something spooky about it I judged. However, we must remember this: the fact that Towahg came across shows that the rest of them would if they found it could be done."
"That was why he led us so far while we waded up that stream," offered Diane. "Trailing Towahg would be like trying to follow the wake of an airship."
"And I asked him about the red vampires that jumped us down by the ship," Chet continued. "He gave me the clear sign on that, too."
Diane was not anxious for more wanderings, as Chet could see. "There is game here," she suggested, "and the edge of the jungle is simply an orchard of fruit, as you know. And having a lake to bathe in is important—oh, I must not try to influence you. We must do what is best."
"No," said Chet, "our own wishes don't count; the ship's the deciding factor. You had better build your house here, Walt. Happy Valley will be headquarters for the expedition; we've got a whale of a lot of country to explore. And, of course, we will slip back and check up on Schwartzmann; find out where he went to—"
"Count me out;" Harkness interrupted; "count me out. You go and hunt trouble if you want to; Diane and I will have our hands full right here. Great heavens, man! We've got to learn to make clothes; and, by the way, that uniform you're wearing is no credit to your tailor. If we are to call this home, we must do better than the savages. I intend to find some bamboo, split it, make some troughs, and bring water down here from the spring. I've got to learn where Kreiss is getting his metal and find some soft enough to hammer into dishes. We can't call the department store by radiophone, you know, and have them shoot a bunch of stuff out by pneumatic tube."
"That's all right," Chet mocked; "by the time you have built a house with only a stone ax in your tool kit, you'll think the rest of it is simple."
The barricade, orchevaux de friseas Chet insisted upon calling it, to show his deep study of the wars of earlier days, was built in the form of a U. The knoll itself sloped on one side directly to the water's edge: they had left that side open and carried their line of sharp stakes down to the water, that in the event of a siege they would not be conquered by thirst.
On the highest point of the knoll, some few weeks later, a house was being built—a more pretentious structure, this, than the other little huts. The aerial roots that the white trees dropped from their high-flung branches were not impossible to cut with their crude implements; they made good building material for a house whose framework must be tied together with vines and tough roots. This would be the home of Harkness and Diane.
The two had been insistent that this structure would be incomplete without a room for Chet, but the pilot only laughed at that suggestion.
"It's an old saying," he told them, "that one house isn't big enough for two families. I think the remark is as old as the institution of marriage, just about. And it's as true on the Dark Moon as it is on Earth. And, besides, I intend to build some bachelor apartments that will make this place of yours look pretty cheap, that is, if I ever find time. I am going to be pretty busy just roaming around this little world seeing what I can see. Even Herr Kreiss has got the wanderlust, you will notice."
"He has been gone four days," said Diane. Her tone was frankly worried. Chet finished tying a sapling to a row of uprights and slid to the ground.
"Don't be alarmed about Kreiss," he reassured her. "He has been all-fired mysterious for the past several weeks. He's been working on something in that cave of his, and visitors have not been admitted. When he left he told me he would be gone for some time, and he looked at me like an owl when he said it: his mysterious secret was making his eyes pop out. He has a surprise up his sleeve."
"Wedding present for Diane," Harkness suggested.
"Well, he showed me some darn nice sapphires," Chet agreed. "Probably found some way to cut them and he's setting them in a bracelet of soft gold: that's my guess."
"I wish he were here," Diane insisted.
And Chet nodded across the clearing as he said fervently: "I wish I could get all my wishes as quickly as that. There he comes now with his bow in one hand and a bag of something in the other."
The tall figure moved wearily across the open ground, but straightened and came briskly toward them as he drew near. He seemed more gaunt than usual, as if he had finished a long journey and had slept but little. But his eyes behind their heavy spectacles were big with pride.
"You have—what do you Americans say?—'poked fun' at my helplessness in the forest," he told Chet. "And now see. Alone and without help I have made a great journey, a most important journey." He held up a bladder, translucent, filled with something palely green.
"The gas!" he said proudly.
"Why, Herr Kreiss," Diane exclaimed, amazed, "you can't mean that you've been to Fire Valley; that that is the gas from about the ship!... And why did you want it? What earthly use...."
She had looked from the proud face of the scientist to that of Harkness; then turned toward Chet. Her voice died away, her question unfinished, at sight of the expression in those other eyes.
"From—the ship? You mean that you've been there—Fire Valley? That you've come back here?" Chet was asking on behalf of Harkness as well: his companion added nothing to the words of the pilot—words spoken in a curiously quiet, strained tone.
"But yes!" Herr Kreiss assured him. His gaze was still proudly fixed upon the bladder of green gas. "I needed some for an experiment—a most important experiment." And not till then did he glance up and let his thin face wrinkle in amazed wonder at the look on the pilot's face.
Chet had raised one end of another stick as Kreiss approached. He had intended to place it against the frame they were building: it fell heavily to the ground instead. He regarded Harkness with eyes that were somber with hopeless despair, yet that somehow crinkled with a whimsical smile.
"Well, I said he had a surprise up his sleeve," he reminded them. "It is nearly night; I can't do anything now. I'll go to-morrow; take Towahg. I don't know that there's anything we can do, but we'll try.
"You will stay here with Diane," he told Harkness. And Harkness accepted the order as he would from one who was in command.
"It's up to you now," he told Chet. "I'll stay here and hold the fort. You're running the job from now on."
But the pilot only nodded. Herr Kreiss was sputtering a barrage of how's and why's; he demanded to know why his success in so hazardous a trip should have this result.
But Chet Bullard did not answer. He walked slowly away, his eyes on the ground, as one who is trying to plan; driving his thoughts in an effort to find some escape from a danger that seemed to hover threateningly.
Towahg had learned the names of these white-skinned ones who came down from whatever heaven was pictured in his rudimentary mind. His pronunciation of them was peculiar: it had not been helped any by reason of Diane's having been his teacher. Her French accent was delightful to hear, but not helpful to a Dark Moon ape-man who was grappling with English.
But he knew them by name, using always the French "Monsieur," and when Chet repeated: "Monsieur Kreiss—he go," pointing through the jungle, and followed this with the command: "Towahg go! Me go!" the ape-man's unlovely face drew into its hideous grin and he nodded his head violently to show that he understood.
Chet gripped a hand each if Harkness and Diane and clung to them for a moment. Below their knoll the white morning mist drifted eerily toward the lake; the knoll was an island and they three the only living creatures in a living world. It was the first division of their little force, the first parting where any such farewell might be the last. The silence hung heavily about them.
"Au 'voir," Diane said softly; "and take no chances. Come back here and we'll win or lose together."
"Blue skies," was Walt Harkness' good-by in the language of the flyer; "blue skies and happy landings!"
And Chet, before the shrouding mist swallowed him up, replied in kind.
"Lifting off!" he announced as if his ship were rising beneath him, "and the air is cleared. I'll drop back in four days if I'm lucky."
Towahg was waiting, curled up for warmth in the hollow of a great tree's roots. Like all the ape-men he was sullen and taciturn in the chill of the morning. Not until the sun warmed him would he become his customary self. But he grunted when Chet repeated his instructions, "Monsieur Kreiss, he go! Now Towahg go too—go where Monsieur Kreiss go!" and he led the way into the jungle where the scientist had emerged.
Chet followed close through wraith-like, drifting mist. They were ascending a gentle slope; among the trees and tangled giant vines the mist grew thin. Then they were above it, and occasional shafts of golden light shot flatly in to mark the ascending sun.
They were climbing toward the big divide, that much Chet knew. White, ghostly trees gave place to the darker, gloomier growth of the uplands. Strange monstrosities, they had been to Chet when first he had seen them, but he was accustomed to them now and passed unnoticing among their rubbery trunks, so black and shining with morning dew.
Far above a wind moved among the pliant branches that whipped and whirled their elastic lengths into strange, curled forms. Then the miracle of the daily growth of leaves took place, and the rubbery limbs were clothed in green, where golden flowers budded prodigiously before they flashed open and filled the wet air with their fragrance.
They were following the path that Chet had traveled on his morning trips to the divide for a view of the ship. Kreiss would have gone this way, of course, although to Chet, there was no sign of his having passed. Then came the divide, and still Chet followed where Towahg led sullenly across the expanse of barren rocks. Towahg's head was sunk between his black shoulders; his long arms hung limply; and he moved on with a steady motion of his short, heavily muscled legs, with apparently no thought of where he went or why.
Chet stopped for a moment's look at the distant sparkle that meant the shining ship, which shone green as on every other day, and he wondered as he had a score of times if it might be possible for them to make a suit—a bag to enclose his head, or a gas-mask—anything that could be made gas-tight: and could be supplied with air. Then he thought of the bow that was slung on his shoulder and the stone ax at his belt. These were their implements: these were all they had.... Suddenly he began to walk rapidly down the slope after Towahg who was almost to the trees.
Again they were among the black rubbery growth. It rose from a tangle of mammoth leafed vines and creepers that wove themselves into an impassable wall—impassable until Towahg lifted a huge leaf here, swung a hanging vine there, and laid open a passage through the living labyrinth.
"How did Kreiss ever find his way?" Chet asked himself. And then he questioned: "Did he come this way? Is Towahg on the trail?"
Again he repeated his instructions to the ape-man, and he showed his own wonder as to which way they should go.
The sun must have done its work effectively, for now Towahg's wide grin was in evidence. He nodded vigorously, then dropped to one knee and motioned for Chet to see for himself, as he pointed to his proof.
Chet stared at the unbroken ground. Was a tiny leaf crushed? It might have been, but so were a thousand others that had fallen from above. He shook his head, and Towahg could only show his elation by hopping ludicrously from one foot to the other in a dance of joy.
Then he went on at a pace Chet found difficulty in following, until they came to a place where Towahg tore a vine aside to show easier going, but climbed instead over a fallen tree, grown thickly with vines, and here even Chet could see that other feet had tripped and stumbled. The Master Pilot glanced at the triple star still pinned to his blouse; he thought of the study and training that had preceded the conferring of that rating, the charting of the stars, navigational problems in a three-dimensional sea. And he smiled at his failure to read this trail that to Towahg was entirely plain.
"Every man to his job," he told the black, and patted him on the shoulder, "and you know yours, Towahg, you're good! Now, where do we sleep?"
He ventured to suggest a bed of leaves that had gathered amongst a maze of great rocks, but Towahg registered violent disapproval. He pointed to a pendant vine; his hands that were clumsy at so many things gave an unmistakable imitation of a bud that developed on that vine and opened. Then Towahg sniffed once at that imaginary flower, and his body went suddenly limp and apparently lifeless as it fell to the ground.
"You're right, old top!" Chet assured him, as Towahg came again to his feet. "This is no place to take a nap." A crashing of some enormous body that tore the tough jungle in its rush came from beyond the rocks.
"And there are other reasons," he added as he followed Towahg's example and leaped for a hanging tangle of laced vines. Here was a ladder ready to take them to the high roof above, but they did not need it; the crashing died away in the distance.
It was Chet's first intimation that this section of the Dark Moon held beasts more huge than the "Moon-pigs" he had killed: it was a disturbing bit of knowledge. He caught Towahg's cautious, wary eyes and motioned toward the branches high overhead.
"How about hanging ourselves up there for the night?" he asked, and the gestures, though not the words, were plain, as the ape-man's quick dissent made clear.
He motioned Chet to follow. Down they plunged, and always down. Towahg gave Chet to understand that Kreiss had slept some distance beyond: they would try to reach the same place. But the quick-falling dusk caught them while yet among the black rubbery trees. And the dark showed Chet why their branches might not be inviting as a sleeping place.
By ones and twos they came at first, occasional lines of light that flowed swiftly and vanished through the black tangle of limbs. Chet could hardly believe them real; they appeared and were lost from sight as if they had melted.
But more came, and it seemed at last as if the roof above were alive with light. The moving, luminous things glowed in hues that were never still: were pure gold, were green, then red, melting and changing through all the colors of the spectrum.
Living fireworks that were a blaze of gorgeous beauty! They wove an ever-moving canopy of softest lights that raced dazzlingly to and fro, that crossed and intertwined; that were dazing to his eyes while they held his senses enthralled by their color and sheer loveliness ... until one light detached itself and fell toward him where he stood spellbound beside a giant fern.
It struck softly behind him, and its crimson glory flashed yellow as it struck, then went black and in the dim light, on a great leathery leaf with a spread of ten feet, Chet saw an enormous worm, whose head was a thing of writhing antennae, whose eyes were pure deadliness, and whose round corrugated body drew up the hanging part that the leaf could not hold. It hunched itself into a huge inverted U and, before Chet could recover from his horrified surprise, was poised to spring.
It was Towahg's strength, not his own, that threw him bodily down the path. It was Towahg who poured a volley of grunted words and shrieks into his ear, while he dragged him back. Chet saw the vicious head flash to loveliest gold while it shot forward to the body's full twelve feet of length—twelve feet of pulsing lavender and rose and flashing crimson that was more horrible by reason of its beauty.
Chet stumbled to his feet and raced after Towahg. The ape-man moved in swift silence, Chet close at his back. And other luminous horrors dropped on ropes of translucent silver behind them, until the ghostly white of friendly trees became visible, and they stood at last, breathless and shaken, as far as Chet was concerned, in the familiar jungle of the lower valleys.
And Towahg, to whom poison vines and writhing, horrible worms of death that had failed to make him their prey were things of a forgotten past, curled up in the shelter of an outflung snarl of great roots, grunted once, and went calmly to sleep.
But Chet Bullard, accustomed only to man-made dangers that would have held Towahg petrified with fear, lay long, staring into the dark.
It was midday when they approached the heights they had reached on their flight from Fire Valley. Off to one side must lie the arena with the pyramid within. And within the pyramid—! Chet took his thoughts quickly away from that. Or perhaps it was the shrieking chatter from ahead that gave him other things to think of.
Towahg had heard them before, but Chet had not understood his signs. And now the chorus of an approaching pack of ape-men was louder with each passing minute. That they were coming along the same trail seemed certain.
Towahg sprang into the air; his gnarled hands closed on a heavy vine: he went up this hand over hand, ready to move off to one side through the leafy roof with never a sign of his going. He waited impatiently for Chet to join him, and the pilot, regarding the incredible leap of that squat ape-man body, shook his head in despair.
"Grab a loose end," he told Towahg. "Lower a rope—a vine. Get it down where I can reach it!" And he raved inwardly at the blank look on the savage face while he held himself in check and made signs over and over in an effort to get the idea across.
Towahg got it at last. He lowered a vine and hauled Chet up with jerks that almost tore the pilot's hands from their hold on the rough bark. Then off to one side! And they waited in the shelter of concealing leaves while the yelling pack drew near and a hundred or more of them raced by along the trail below.
Invisible to Chet was the marked trail where Kreiss had gone, but these savage things ran at top speed and read it as they ran.
Were they puzzled by the sudden increase in markings? Did they sense that some were more recent than those they had followed? Chet could not say. But he saw the pack return, staring curiously about until they swung off and vanished through the trees toward the west. And in that direction lay the arena and the haunt of a horror unknown.
Yet Chet lowered himself to the ground with steady hands and motioned Towahg where the yelling mob had gone.
"We'll go that way," he said; "we'll follow them up. And perhaps, if I can only get the idea into your thick head, we can learn what their plans are: find out if Kreiss has really thrown us in their hands—led them as straight as a pack of wolves could run to the quiet peace of Happy Valley."
Chet might have followed them into the arena itself: he felt so keenly that he must know with certainty whether or not the pack would continue their pursuit. And why had they turned back? he asked himself. Had they returned to acquaint their horrible god and his hypnotised slaves with what they had learned?
But the trail turned off from the rocky waste where the arena lay; it took them west and south for another mile, until again to Chet's ears came the chattering bedlam of monkey-talk that was almost human. And now they moved more cautiously from rock to tree and through the concealing shadows until they could look into a shallow valley ahead. But before Chet looked he was prepared for a surprising scene. For over and above the raucous calling of the ape-folk had come another deeper tone.
"Gott im Himmel!" the deep voice said. "One at a time, youverdammtbeasts. Beat them on the head, Max; make them shut up!"
And the big bulk of Schwartzmann, when Chet first saw him, was seated on a high rock that was like a barbaric throne in a valley of green. About him the ape-men leaped and grimaced and made futile animal efforts to tell him of their discovery.
"They've found something, Max," Schwartzmann said to his pilot. "Get the other two men. We'll go with the dirty brutes. And if they've got wind of those others—" His remarks concluded with a sputtering of profanity whose nature was not obscured by its being given in another language. And Chet knew that the obscenities were intended for his companions and himself.
Schwartzmann's booming voice came plainly even above the chorus of coughing growls and shriller chatter. Chet saw him showing his detonite pistol in a half-threatening motion, and the ape-men cringed away in fear.
"Not so well trained an army, Max, that I am general of, but if we find that man, Harkness, and his pilot and that traitor Kreiss, we will let these soldiers of mine tear them to little bits. Now, we go!"
Max's call had brought the other two men of Schwartzmann's party, and the black horde of ape-men broke into a wild run across the grass toward the place where Chet and Towahg lay. The two slipped hurriedly into the concealment of denser growth, then ran at top speed down a jungle trail that led off to one side.
They were bedded down for the night on the edge of the white forest; no persuasion of Schwartzmann's would have driven the ape-men into the darkness of the black trees and their flashing, luminous worm-beasts. Chet and Towahg came within hearing of their encampment just at dusk, and a late-rising moon broke through the gaps in the leafy roof to make splotched islands of gold in the velvet dark where Chet and Towahg fought the jungle so they might swing around and past the camp. Occasional grunts and scufflings showed that the ape-men were restless, and the two knew that every step must be taken in silence and every obstructing leaf moved with no rasping friction on other leaves or branches. But they came again to the trail, and now they were ahead of the pack, as the first gray light of dawn was stealing through the ghostly white of the trees.
Towahg would have curled himself into a sleepy ball a score of times had Chet not driven him on, and now the pilot only allowed a few minutes for food, where ripe purple fruit hung in clusters on the end of stems that were like ropes.
No use to explain to Towahg. Perhaps the ape-man thought they were hurrying to get through the black forest; he might even have thought the matter through to see the necessity for reaching their own valley and warning the others. Certainly he had no idea of any plans other than these, and he must have been puzzled some several hours later when Chet halted where the trail had crossed a barren expanse of rock.
Towahg had stopped there on the way down. Then he had sniffed the air, dropped his head low and circled about, motioning Chet to follow, from across the clearing where he had picked up the trail. Chet knew the ape-men would do the same unless they were diverted, and he had a plan. To communicate it to his assistant was his greatest problem.
He stopped at the clearing, while Towahg urged him on across the smooth rock. Chet shook his head and pointed away from the direction of the big divide, and at last he made him understand. Then Towahg did what Chet never could have done.
He followed their former trail across the stone, his head close to the ground. Now he picked a bruised leaf: again he replaced a turned stone whose markings showed it had been displaced, and he came back over an area that even an ape-man would not follow as being a place where men had gone.
From where they emerged he turned as Chet had pointed, crossed the clearing as clumsily as the German scientist might have done, scuffed his bare feet in a pocket of gravel, and pointed to soft earth where Chet might walk and leave a mark of shoes. Chet grinned happily while Towahg did his grotesque dance that indicated satisfaction, though from afar the first cries of the pack rang in the air.
They could never have outdistanced the apes alone, Chet knew that. But he also knew that Schwartzmann and the others would slow them up, and he counted on the pack staying together on the trail as they traversed this new country. He entered the jungle with Towahg where their new trail led, and drove his tired muscles to greater speed while Towahg, always in the lead, motioned him on.
There were stops for food at times until another night came, and Chet threw himself down on a mat of grass and fell instantly asleep. If there was danger abroad he neither knew nor cared. He knew only that every muscle of his body was aching from the forced march, and that Towahg's twitching ears were on guard.
The following day they went more slowly, stopping at times to wait for the sounds of pursuit. They were leading the pack on a long journey; Chet wanted to be sure they were following and had not turned back. He left a plain mark of his boot from time to time, and knew that this mark would be shown to Schwartzmann. With that to lead him there would be no stopping the man: he would drive his army of blacks despite their superstitious fears.
The short days and nights formed an endless succession to Chet. Only once did he see a familiar place, as they passed a valley and he saw where their ship had rested on that earlier voyage.
"This is far enough," he told Towahg, and made himself plain with signs. "Now we'll lose them; hang them right up in the air and leave them there."
Another steep climb and a valley beyond, and in the hollow a tumbling stream. There was no need to tell Towahg what to do, for he led straight for the water, and his thick legs churned through it as he headed down stream; nor did he stop until they had covered many miles.
Chet had wondered how they would leave the water without trace, but again Towahg was ready. A stone where the water splashed would show no mark of bare feet. From it he leaped into the air toward a swaying vine. He missed, tried again, and finally grasped it. And the rest was a repetition of what had been done before.
He lowered a vine as Chet had taught him, pulled the slim figure of Chet up to the dizzy heights of the jungle trees, then took Chet's one arm in a grip of chilled steel and threw him across his back, while he swung sickeningly from limb to limb, up through the branches of another grotesque tree where its queerly distorted limbs sagged and swung them to its fellow some fifty feet away.
It was a wild ride for the pilot. "I've driven everything that's made with an engine in it," he told himself, "but this one-ape-power craft has them all stopped for thrills."
And at last when even Towahg's chest that seemed ribbed with steel, was rising and falling with his great breaths, Chet found himself set down on the ground, and he patted the black on the shoulder in the gesture that meant approval.
"Water and air," he said; "it'll bother them to trail us over that route. Towahg, you're there when it comes to trapeze work. Now, if you can find the way back again—!"
And Towahg could, as Chet admitted when, after a series of eventless days, they came again to the big divide above the reaches of Happy Valley.
And the grip of Harkness' hand, and the tears in Diane's eyes brought a choke to his throat until the voluble apologies of a penitent Herr Kreiss and the antics of a Towahg, recipient of many approving pats, turned the emotion into the safer channel of laughter.
"But I think we switched them off for good," Chet said, in conclusion of his recital; "I believe we are as safe as we ever were. And I've only one big regret:
"If I could just have been around somewhere when friend Schwartzmann found his scouts had led him up a blind alley, it would have been worth the trip. He did pretty well when he started cussing us out before; I'll bet he pumped his vocabulary dry on them this time."
Work on the house was resumed. "And when it is done," said Diane with a gay laugh, "Walter and I shall have our wedding day. Now you see why you were wanted so badly, Chet; it was not that we worried for you, but only that we feared the loss of the one person on the Dark Moon who could perform a marriage ceremony."
"And I thought all along it was my clever carpenter work that had captivated you," responded Chet, and tried to fit the splintered end of a timber into a forked branch that made an upright post.
And each day the house took form, while the sun shone down with tropical warmth where the work was going on.
Only Harkness and Chet were the builders. Diane's strength was not equal to the task of cutting tough wood with a crude stone ax, and Herr Kreiss, though willing enough to help when asked, was usually in his own cave, busied with mysterious experiments of which he would tell nothing.
Towahg, their only remaining Helper, could not be held. Too wild for restraint of any kind, he would vanish into the jungle at break of day to reappear now and then as silently as a black shadow. But he kept them all supplied with game and fruit and succulent roots which his wilder brethren of the forest must have shown him were fit for food.
And then came an interruption that checked the work on the house, that drained the brilliant sunshine of its warmth and light, and turned all thoughts to the question of defense.
The two had been working on the roof, while Diane had returned to the jungle for another of the big leaves. She carried her bow on such trips, although the weeks had brought them a sense of security. But for Chet this feeling of safety vanished in the instant that he heard Harkness' half-uttered exclamation and saw him drop quickly to the ground.
Beyond him, coming through the green smother of grass that was now as high as her waist, was Diane. Even at a distance Chet could see the unnatural paleness of her face; she was running fast, coming along the trail they had all helped to make.
Chet hit the ground on all fours and reached for the long bow with which he had become so expert; then followed Harkness who was racing to meet the girl.
"An ape!" she was saying between choking breaths when Chet reached them. "An ape-man!" She was clinging to Harkness in utter fright that was unlike the Diane he had known.
"Towahg," Harkness suggested; "you saw Towahg!" But the girl shook her head. She was recovering something of her normal poise; her breath came more evenly.
"No! It was not Towahg. I saw it. I was hidden under the big leaves. It was an ape-man. He came swinging along through the branches of the trees: he was up high and he looked in all directions. I ran. I think he did not see me.
"And now," she confessed, "I am ashamed. I thought I had forgotten the horror of that experience, but this brought it all back.... There! I am all right now."
Harkness held her tenderly close. "Frightened," he reassured her, "and no wonder! That night on the pyramid left its mark on us all. Now, come; come quietly."
He was leading the girl toward the knoll that they all called home. Chet followed, casting frequent glances toward the trees. They had covered half the distance to the barricade when Chet spoke in a voice that was half a whisper in its hushed tenseness.
"Drop—quick!" he ordered. "Get into the grass. It's coming. Now let's see what it is."
He knew that the others had taken cover. For himself, he had flung his lanky figure into the tall grass. The bow was beside him, an arrow ready; and the tip of polished bone and the feathered shaft made it a weapon that was not one to be disregarded. Long hours of practice had developed his natural aptitude into real skill. Before him, he parted the tall grass cautiously to see the forest whence the sound had come.
The swish of leaves had warned Chet; some far-flung branch must have failed to bear the big beast's weight and had bent to swing him to the ground—or perhaps the descent was intentional.
And now there was silence, the silence of noonday that is so filled with unheard summer sounds. A foot above Chet's head a tiny bat-winged bird rocked and tilted on vermilion leather wings, while its iridescent head made flickering rainbow colors with the vibrations of a throat that hummed a steady call. Across the meadow were countless other flashing, humming things, like dust specks dancing in the sun, but magnified and intensely colored.
Above their droning note was the shrill cry of the insects that spent their days in idle and ceaseless unmusical scrapings. They inhabited the shadowed zone along the forest edge. And now, where the foliage of the towering trees was torn back in a great arch, the insect shrilling ceased.
As the strings of a harp are damped and silenced in unison, their myriad voices ended that shrill note in the same instant. The silence spread; there was a hush as if all living things were mute in dread expectancy of something as yet unseen.
Chet was watching that arched opening. In one instant, except for the flickering shadows, it was empty; the place was so still it might have been lifeless since the dawn of time. And then—
Chet neither saw nor heard him come. He was there—a hulking hairy figure that came in absolute silence despite his huge weight.
An ape-man larger than any Chet had seen: he stood as motionless as an exhibit in a museum in some city of a far-off Earth. Only the white of his eyeballs moved as the little eyes, under their beetling black brows, darted swiftly about.
"Bad!" thought Chet. "Damn bad!" If this was an advance scout for a pick of great monsters like himself it meant an assault their own little force could never meet. And this newcomer was hostile. There was not the least doubt of that.
Chet reached one hand behind him to motion for silence; one of his companions had stirred, had moved the grass in a ripple that was not that of the wind. Chet held his hand rigid in air, his whole body seeming to freeze with a premonition that was pure horror; and within him was a voice that said with dreadful certainty: "They have found you. They have hunted you down."
For the thing in the forest, the creature half-human, half-beast, had raised its two shaggy arms before it; and, with eyes fixed and staring, it was walking straight toward them, walking as no other living thing had walked, but one. Chet was seeing again that one—a helplessly hypnotized ape that appeared from a pit in a great pyramid. And the voice within him repeated hopelessly: "They have found you. They have run you down."
Chet lay motionless. He still hoped that the dread messenger might pass them by, but the rigidly outstretched arms were extended straight toward him; the creature's short, heavily muscled legs were moving stiffly, tearing a path through the thick grass and bringing him nearer with every step.
Diane and Harkness had been a few paces in advance of Chet when they dropped into the concealing grass. Chet could see where they lay, and the ape-man, as he approached, turned off as if he had lost the direction. He passed Chet by, passed where Walt and Diane were hiding and stopped! And Chet saw the glazed eyes turn here and there about their peaceful valley.
Unseeing they seemed, but again Chet knew better. Was he more sensitively attuned than the others? Who could say? But again he caught a message as plainly as if the words had been shouted inside his brain.
"Yes, the valley of the three sentinel peaks and the lake of blue; we can find it again. Houses, shelters—how crudely they build, these white-faced intruders!" Chet even sensed the contempt that accompanied the thoughts. "That is enough; you have done well. You shall have their raw hearts for your reward. Now bring them in—bring them in quickly!"
The instant action that followed this command was something Chet would never have believed possible had his own eyes not seen the incredible leap of the huge body. The ape-man's knotted muscles hurled him through the air directly toward the spot where Walt and Diane were hidden. But, had Chet been able to stand off and observe himself, he might have been equally amazed at the sight of a man who leaped erect, who raised a long bow, fitted an arrow, drew it to his shoulder, and did all in the instant while the huge brute's body was in the air.
The great ape landed on all fours. When he straightened and stood erect—his arms were extended, and in each of his gnarled hands he held a figure that was helpless in that terrible grasp.
No chance to loose the arrow then, though the brute's back was half turned. He had Harkness and Diane by their throats, and Chet knew by the unresisting limpness of Harkness' body that the fearful fire in those blazing eyes had them in a grip even more deadly than the hands of the beast.
Thoughts were flashing wildly through Chet's brain. "Knocked 'em cold! He'll do the same to me if I meet his eyes. But I can't shoot now; Diane's in line. I must take him face about; get him before he gets me—get him first time!"
And, confusedly, there were other thoughts mingled with his own—thoughts he was picking up by means of a nervous system that was like an aerial antenna:
"Good—good! No—do not kill them. Not now; bring them to us alive. The pleasure will come later. And where are the other two? Find them!" It was here that Chet let out a wordless, blood-curdling shriek from lungs and throat that were tight with breathless waiting.
He must face the big brute about, and his wild yell did the work. Startled by that cry that must have reached even those calloused, savage nerves, the ape-man leaped straight up in the air. He whirled as he sprang, to face whatever was behind him, and he threw the bodies of Harkness and Diane to the ground.
Chet saw the black ugliness of the face; he saw the eyes swing toward him.... But he was following with his own narrowed eyes a spot on a hairy throat; he even seemed to see within it where a great carotid artery carried pumping blood to an undeveloped brain.
The glare of those eyes struck him like a blow: his own were drawn irresistibly into that meeting of glances that would freeze him to a rigid statue—but the twang and snap of his own bowstring was in his ears, and a hairy body, its throat pierced in mid-air, was falling heavily to the ground.
But Chet Bullard, even as he leaped to the side of his companions, was thinking not of his victory, nor even of the two whose lives he had saved. He was thinking of some horror that his mind could not clearly picture: it had found them; it had seen them through this ape-man's eyes before the arrow had closed them in death ... and from now on there could not be two consecutive minutes of peace and happiness in this Happy Valley of Diane's.